BEIJING, Aug. 8 (Xinhuanet) -- Driven by climate change, disease and coastal development, coral reefs in many regions of the Pacific Ocean are failing faster than previously thought, a study released Wednesday reveals.

    University of North Carolina in Chapel Hill researchers discovered coral coverage in the Indo-Pacific — an area stretching from Indonesia's Sumatra island to French Polynesia — dropped 20 percent during the last 20 years.

    About 600 square miles of reefs have vanished since the 1960s, the study found, and the losses were just as bad in Australia's well-protected Great Barrier Reef as they were in poorly managed marine reserves in the Philippines.

    "We found the loss of reef building corals was much more widespread and severe than previously thought," said John Bruno, who conducted the study along with Elizabeth Selig. "Even the best managed reefs in the Indo-Pacific suffered significant coral loss over the past 20 years."

    The study examined 6,000 surveys of more than 2,600 Indo-Pacific coral reefs done between 1968 and 2004. It found the declines began earlier than previously estimated and mirror global trends. The United Nations has found close to a third of the world's corals have disappeared, and 60 percent are expected to be lost by 2030.

    The Indo-Pacific contains 75 percent of the world's coral reefs and provide a home for a wide variety of marine animals and plants. They provide shelter for island communities and are key sources of income, mostly from the benefits of fishing and tourism.

    "Indo-Pacific reefs have played an important economic and cultural role in the region for hundreds of years and their continued decline could mean the loss of millions of dollars in fisheries and tourism," Selig said in a statement. "It's like when everything in the forest is gone except for little twigs."

    Although the study didn't investigate the cause of the decline, Bruno said he believed it was driven by a range of factors including warming waters due to climate change. He also blamed storm damage, runoff from agriculture and industry, predators like fast-spreading crown-of-thorn starfish and diseases like White syndrome.

    (Agencies)